The Bhagavad Gita is universally acknowledged as one of the world's literary and spiritual masterpieces. It is the core text of the Hindu tradition, one that has been translated into more than two hundred English editions. Stephen Mitchell—the acclaimed translator of Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, and the Tao Te Ching—has produced a definitive version of The Bhagavad Gita for our time. Mitchell's translation sings with the clarity, the vigor, and the intensity...

The classic guide for Zen students pursuing the true way."Somebody comes into the Zen center with a lighted cigarette, walks up to the Buddha-statue, blows smoke in its face and drops ashes on its lap. You are standing there. What can you do?" This is a problem that Zen Master Seung Sahn was fond of posing to his American students who attended his Zen centers.Dropping Ashes on the Buddha is a delightful, irreverent, and often hilariously funny livi...

'A powerful translation' The Telegraph'As narrative verse, this Gilgamesh entrances and enthrals.' Independent'Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh is a wonderful version' Harold BloomVivid, enjoyable and comprehensible, the poet and pre-eminent translator Stephen Mitchell makes the oldest epic poem in the world accessible for the first time.Gilgamesh is a born leader, but in an att...

“I love The First Christmas. What a charming way Stephen Mitchell has found to tell my favorite story of all, the Nativity, character by character (I love the donkey and the ox), with wise and thrilling interludes about God, reality, truth.” –Anne LamottIn The First Christmas, Stephen Mitchell brings the Nativity story to vivid life as never before. A narrative that is only sketched out in two Gospels becomes fully realized here with nuanced chara...

Let the heavens and the earth rejoice: A new adaptation of the psalms from the author of The Gospel According to Jesus.When the ancient rabbis named the anthology that we know as the Book of Psalms, they called it sefer tehillim—the Book of Praises. That is the dominant theme of the greatest of the Psalms: a rapturous praise, a deep, exuberant gratitude for being here.In this volume, leading biblical scholar and award-winning translator Step...

The Bhagavad Gita, or 'Song of the Spirit', is the best known book of India's national epic The Mahabharata. Based on a dialogue between Bhagavan Krishna and Prince Arjuna on the eve of a great battle, it is held to be the essence of Hindu spirituality, sacred literature and yoga, as well as exploring the great universal themes of courage, honour, death, love, virtue and fulfilment. Of interest to the large number of contemporary spiritual seekers - of any faith and none - who want to read...

“I love The First Christmas. What a charming way Stephen Mitchell has found to tell my favorite story of all, the Nativity, character by character (I love the donkey and the ox), with wise and thrilling interludes about God, reality, truth.” –Anne LamottIn The First Christmas, Stephen Mitchell brings the Nativity story to vivid life as never before. A narrative that is only sketched out in two Gospels becomes fully realized here with nuanced chara...

Enhanced by Stephen Mitchell’s illuminating commentary, the next volume of the classic manual on the art of livingThe most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living. Following the phenomenal success of his own version of the Tao Te Ching, renowned scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell has composed the innovative The Second Book of the Tao. Drawn from ...

"A twenty-first-century form of ancient wisdom . . . Mitchell's flights, his paradoxes, his wonderful riffs are brilliant and liberating." -Pico IyerThe most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living. Following the phenomenal success of his own version of the Tao Te Ching, renowned scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell has composed t...

From Stephen Mitchell comes an anthology of poetry chosen from the world's great religious and literary traditions--the perfect companion to Mitchel's bestselling translation of Tao Te Ching• The Upanishads • The Book of Psalms • Lao-tzu • The Bhagavad Gita • Chuang-tzu • The Odes of Solomon • Seng-ts'an • Han-shan • Li Po • Tu Fu • Layman P'ang • Kukai • Tung-shan • Symeon the New Theologian • Izumi Shikibu • Su Tung-p'o • Hildegard of Bingen • Francis of...

In this treasury of passionate and humorous encounters with animals, Stephen Mitchell has collected animal poems from many ages and cultures. Included here are excerpts from ancient masterpieces like The Hymn to the Sun by Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, The Book of Job, as well as haikus by Basho and Issa. Additional works included here are poems by Christopher Smart, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Gerald Manley Hopkins. With some of the best animal poems ever w...

"One of our oldest stories of grace . . . The heart cannot help but be moved and healed by the treasure to be found in these pages." —Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times–bestselling authorStephen Mitchell's gift is to breathe new life into ancient classics. In The Way of Forgiveness, he offers us his riveting novelistic version of the Biblical tale in which Jacob's favorite son is sold into slavery and eventually becomes viceroy of Egypt. Tolstoy ...